hemantreddy / theatre-booking

Movie Theatre Seating

This algorithm attempts to fulfil the reservation requests, taking into account the size and buffer of seats required between each booking.

Assumptions

• Rows are labelled from A - J and, and screen is closest to the A row.
• If the system gets a request where the number of seats requested is greater than any contiguous available seats, the request is denied, and we move on to the next request.
• Best seats are defined by the distance between screen and seats. Higher the distance, better the seats.

Approach

• Always fill from the J left corner, and go towards right for seats and bottom for rows, making sure you utilise all the seats properly.
• Every row class has the maxiumContinuousAvailable count and the firstAvailableSeat pointer at which that count starts. This helps us evaluate which row would work out best for which seat

Steps to run the project

To compile the project, open your terminal and go to the root directory of the project, and run the following command

mvn clean compile assembly:single

And to execute the driver code

java -jar target/movieTheater-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar

Sample input, this can be placed in input.txt file.

R001 2
R002 4
R003 4
R004 3

ROOX corresponds to request ID and number after space corresponds to the number of seats requested.

Further Improvements

• Cancellations
  • Methods to handle the complete and partial reservations.
• Ability to handle multiple movies on the same screen in a single day